A not-bad profile of some of my fellow Maryland Mormons, if somewhat obsessed with the hot demographics of this year’s presidential race: female, black, and Mormon. I would have been happy to take the role of the stereotypical white, conservative male Mormon but the reporter was obviously looking for something different.
Monica Lauren Robinson, the daughter of a U.S. Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm and the granddaughter of a Southern Baptist deacon from Alabama, isn’t the first African-American to embrace the Mormon Faith. In fact, a former Maryland slave named Elijah Abel (no relation, as far as I know) was a respected church elder back in the 1830s. But there aren’t many: only 10 out of 90 members in Ms. Robinson’s “singles ward” in the mostly black inner city of Baltimore. And, of course, it wasn’t until 1978 that God chose to reveal to the church’s living prophet in Salt Lake City that male negroes indeed are as worthy of the priesthood as non-female Caucasians.
I’ve met her through the members of my local ward in the Maryland suburbs, where I waltzed blithely into the chapel last Sunday as if attending The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints were the sort of thing I do all the time. My approach was rather direct: I asked everyone I encountered “Do you know any black Mormons?” and, as it happened, somebody did.
And a refreshing twist from most of the profiles of Huckabee followers:
There is no indication that “Vote For Mitt” is being proclaimed from the Mormon pulpit. This, I am told, would be a violation of the free will - “our sacred Agency,” Mormons call it - that forms the foundation of the covenant between the Latter-Day Saints and the Lord.
“That would be considered bad taste,” says church member Sylvia Cabus of Washington, D.C., a Mormon Democrat born Catholic in the Philippines and married to a Moroccan Berber Muslim. “It is within our Articles of Faith to support the government, but it doesn’t say how we should support it. The most that I’ve ever seen in our ward was one of the Sisters with a Mitt Romney water bottle. We do talk politics, but not on Sundays.”
Or, as Marlisa Fullmer says, “Just because he’s in my faith doesn’t mean he’ll get my vote.”
Tags: Mitt Romney, mormon politician, race
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If the author had attended the Baltimore Inner Harbor ward just a few miles west of where the singles ward meets she would have seen a congregation that’s about half black. I would bet that we’re the most racially integrated of all the congregations of all the different denominations in the city. It’s a racially diverse area, but still pretty segregated in a lot of ways.
Overall it was a decent article, but this parenthetical of hers was super lame: “(All is to be revealed in Heaven, which a Mormon woman cannot attain without her mate or father.)”
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Oops. The author is a “he,” not a “she.”
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Thanks for the Baltimore perspective Tom.
Down in suburban-DC Maryland, we may not quite be half black but the author wouldn’t have had to go asking for black Mormons.
I thought that was a lame and snarky part too, and misleading. It works both ways!
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>”I believe that President Hinckley is a true and living Prophet,” Ms. Robinson says. “My friends think I’m crazy because every time I see him on television, I’m like, ‘This is my future husband.’
>”I mean, look at him! He’s just so cute!”
?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Violation of our sacred agency and free will? Did anyone else think that was an odd way of explaining why the church doesn’t endorse political candidates? Arguably the church violates our sacred agency all the time, what with telling us to pay tithing, magnify our callings, attend the temple, refrain from sleeping with our neighbor’s wives, ad naseum. There are lots of reasons why the church doesn’t tell us who to vote for, but one of them is not that the church never tells us what we should or should not do.
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FWIW, I don’t see that the church “telling us to pay tithing, magnify our callings, attend the temple …” violates anyone’s agency, sacred or otherwise. The choice to listen and follow advice, or not, is still within each individual’s agency.
I suspect that many of our lives could stand as living testament to the fact that being told to do something does not mean that we will do it. But, of course, I could be wrong.
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Olson, I agree with your comment, it just sounded like the most awkward way of explaining the church’s political neutrality that I had heard in a long time. (Though I would suspect that there is more than one voter in this country that votes a certain way simply because it’s what their pastor/preacher/other religious leader told them to do.)
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Well, we actually talked for about an hour, and only a couple of snippets made it in!
Sylvia
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Thanks for stopping by Sylvia!
That’s the problem with the media, especially the old kind. They’ll selectively edit down whatver you say and you’re at their mercy how they will portray your comments.
I think you did fine.
BTW, I’m in the Silver Spring stake.
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Thanks for pointing this out. Monica was one of my seminary students, and her father Ed was my Elders’ Quorum president. So odd to see her as the focus of an article in a Canadian newspaper.
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